As we move our consciousness into consideration of the New Age, we are faced with a need to reevaluate our understanding of spirit and of matter. This has already been brought to our attention within this century by research done in the field of physics, indicating that what we used to call “matter” is in itself a variation of energy, and these seemingly so solid objects upon which we base our physical life are actually patterns of energy moving in relationship to each other across vast microcosmic distances.

My friend Warren was killed in a car accident a few weeks ago in Spain. He was leaving the World Cup games in a rented car, and he wasn’t driving. When I heard he was killed in a car I presumed he had been driving — since he had been smashing the front and back end of his and his friends’ cars for years. He would drink a lot and then he would drive — the accident was just the last part of an equation. When you’re drinking, even a car looks friendly. It’s not, though; it’s worse than cancer, at least at Warren’s age.

I. Writers may write in clear English, without needlessly opaque, spectacular and nonlinear associations. Code obfuscates; poetic code obfuscates utterly.

When Rex Belknap quit his wife and their assorted little Belknaps, it was another woman who beckoned him away. Strange how some men seem to play out the whole of their lives in the laps of women, leaping from apron to apron only to lose themselves again in the ruffles. Ah, but stay your judgement until you hear. For it was not some glossy jetsam washed up on his shore, not a Mary Flirt, the mermaid, come with siren song and hips ashimmer to win his heart. It was old Gramma Belknap, long dead, long lamented, now swum up from his memory. A Joan of Arc, a Florence Chadwick, she crawled her way into his imagination, recaptured it, and from there beseiged his soul. And the white sea unfurled in ruffles all around.